If you've never performed a backup of your PC, then you're risking potential disaster if your hard drive fails or the 'On' switch simply doesn't work for some reason. CrashPlan is a backup solution.
If you've been put off by backup tools because you're intimidated by how complicated they might be, then you may be pleasantly surprised by CrashPlan. CrashPlan offers you two options - online and offline backups. Online backups are obviously not free but they are automatic and ensure that you'll never have to worry about losing data again. Offline backups are free and quick although you should make sure the hardware you're backing-up to is secure. You can use CrashPlan to backup up to 10 different machines and you can even backup your data to other Macs or PCs.
Getting started with CrashPlan couldn't be easier. The installation wizard requires four simple steps to set up a CrashPlan account, including your email address, username and configuring a password. Then all you have to do is choose a method for backing up. If you choose to backup online, anything more than 2 GB could take a long, long time, so be prepared to wait. In tests, however, we backed up to an external drive and 60GB gave us an estimated time of five hours, which isn't bad.
Every step of the way, CrashPlan explains clearly what is happening and what will happen next. It consumes very little of your CPU as it backs up, leaving you to get on with more important things. The only complaint about CrashPlan is that it should have detected that our external hard drive was not big enough to backup the hard drive. It simply went straight into the backup and only informed us that the disk was full only when it reached that stage.
CrashPlan is an excellent piece of backup software. Easy to use, fast and lightweight, it ensures that either online or offline, you'll never have to worry about losing your data again.
